Trump allows conspiracy theorist to stay on government payroll

Oliver Willis

10 months ago

American taxpayers are bankrolling the six-figure salary of Jon Cordova, a conspiracy theorist who has attacked muslims, black voters, and the Clintons.

The Trump administration is losing staff seemingly by the day. Perhaps that’s why Jon Cordova, a Health and Human Services Department official who circulated bigoted conspiracy theories, is being allowed to keep his job.

And it’s a move that comes at massive taxpayer expense.

Cordova was a Trump delegate at the Republican convention and worked in communications for the campaign. Most recently, he has served as the principal deputy assistant secretary for administration HHS. The department placed him on administrative leave after CNN reported on the lurid conspiracies Cordova circulated.

But now the agency has brought him back on board. And he will continue to collect a six-figure salary financed by federal tax dollars.

The litany of offenses in CNN’s report is long. On his Facebook page, Cordova circulated a fake news story alleging that Gold Star father Khizr Khan was a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.” Khan rose to prominence at the Democratic convention in 2016 with a powerful response to Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry.

He pushed a story claiming Sen. Ted Cruz frequented prostitutes, was involved in a sex scandal, and was hiding his birth records.

Cordova has called Democrats “the real racists” and said 95 percent of black voters wouldn’t have supported President Barack Obama if he were white. And he referred to Hillary Clinton as a “slimy trailer trash huckster” and repeatedly pushed fake stories about her.

He also used Twitter to call for a boycott of Budweiser, based on a conspiracy theory that it supports “jihadis.”

HHS spokesman Ryan Murphy tried to defend the decision to keep Cordova on the payroll at taxpayer expense.

Murphy insisted that “none of the posts cited by the CNN report appears to have been created by Mr. Cordova since joining HHS last year.”

But he added that Cordova “acknowledged that he may have allowed the heat of the political campaign to undermine his better judgment, resulting in posted content by him that may have inadvertently offended many.”

The Trump administration has been losing staffers left and right, including at the highest levels.

And keeping someone with Cordova’s repulsive track record on board will at least avoid the humiliation of yet another departure.